Not the best quality photo. Also, Tate looks like he is in pain. He wasn't. He was waking from a long nap. Lily loves him so much, and wanted to hold him. Well, him and Carl.
We have a very similar video of Billy exercising and dancing with a week old baby Lily.
I will sleep at night for...One Million Dollars!!
ACE
Socks provided by the hospital for infants fall off. They are nothing more than a way to torture new parents - I picked up on that last time we were here. So, what I have done is stuff the socks with paper and placed the socks so they are just sticking out from under the blanket in Tate's bassinet. The effect makes him look about 3 feet long and unusally straight for someone only two or three days old. This has given me much pleasure.
All the grandparents and Lily came to meet Tate today. Lily did so great. She wanted to touch, kiss and feed her little brother. Hopefully once we are all home, she will still feel that way.
I first heard this word in college from a quirky professor I had in a copy editing class. Professor Ernie Wyatt is as different and interesting as his name might imply - to me anyway. When class was over for the day, he'd send us away with a lagniappe in the form of a bit of trivial information - of which copy editors seem to have in abundance. Mark Twain writes about the word in a chapter on New Orleans in Life on the Mississippi (1883). He called it "a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get":
We picked up one excellent word — a word worth travelling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word — "lagniappe." They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish — so they said. We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and ends in the Picayune, the first day; heard twenty people use it the second; inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got facility in swinging it the fourth. It has a restricted meaning, but I think the people spread it out a little when they choose. It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a "baker's dozen." It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure. The custom originated in the Spanish quarter of the city. When a child or a servant buys something in a shop — or even the mayor or the governor, for aught I know — he finishes the operation by saying — "Give me something for lagniappe." The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of licorice-root, gives the servant a cheap cigar or a spool of thread, gives the governor — I don't know what he gives the governor; support, likely. When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and then in New Orleans — and you say, "What, again? — no, I've had enough;" the other party says, "But just this one time more — this is for lagniappe." When the beau perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too high, and sees by the young lady's countenance that the edifice would have been better with the top compliment left off, he puts his "I beg pardon — no harm intended," into the briefer form of "Oh, that's for lagniappe."
So, here's the little something extra I have to offer today: Ali and I have been married for about 34 months, 18 of which she has been pregnant...
Here are pics of Tate before and after his arrival. William Tate Earle was born at 6:46 A.M. on September 10, 2011. He weighed 7lbs 2oz and was 20 inches long. Ali is recovering well from her surgery and Tate is adjusting normally. All is well.